AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He pulls back and looks at me. “You love me?”
All I can do is nod. I can’t tell if he’s happy I said it or not. Now I’m getting nervous.
But then he smiles. “I love you too. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
I smile back. “Maybe.”
He pulls me in for a hug. “You’re hard not to love. Believe me, I tried, but I couldn’t help myself.”
“Why did you try?” I pull back enough to look at him.
“You know why.”
“Because of our agreement?”
“Well, yeah. After this summer…” He doesn’t finish the thought.
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that.” I take his hand and keep hold of it as I walk around him. “C’mon.”
“Where are we going?”
“To sit down. I want to talk to you about something.” Once we’re seated, I face him and say, “I don’t want this to end after the summer.”
He looks down and exhales a long breath. “Sage.”
“What?”
“We knew what would happen. We had an arrangement.”
“I know, but that was back in May. A lot has changed since then. We didn’t love each other then. We do now.”
“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” he says, his head still down.
“But it did.” I scoot closer to him and slide my hand in his. “Now we just need to figure out how to see each other after the summer.”
He’s quiet. Why isn’t he saying anything?
“What?” I ask, but get no response. “Kyle, what is it? What’s wrong?”
He finally looks up. “It’s not going to work.”
“It won’t if we don’t have a plan.” My voice sounds breathy and uneven, almost panicked, because he’s not reacting the way I was hoping. “That’s why I wanted us to talk. To figure out a plan for how to make this work. I was thinking we could try to see each other every other week. Like maybe you’ll fly here once a month and I’ll fly there once a month. I know it’ll be expensive but I’ll work two jobs if that’s what it takes to see you.”
He shakes his head. “That’s not going happen.”
“Why? I don’t understand.”
“We said it would just be casual. That we’d only do this for the summer. After that, we go our separate ways. That was the plan.” His voice sounds normal but his expression is pained. His words don’t match what he’s feeling. What he really wants.
“But the plan changed.” I look at him but he won’t look back, his gaze on the floor. “Kyle, you just said you love me. If you love me, you wouldn’t want to never see me again.”
He closes his eyes and sighs.
“What does that mean? What are you thinking?”
He keeps his eyes closed. “I’m thinking we shouldn’t have let it get this far. Once we felt it going beyond casual we should’ve stopped seeing each other.” He opens his eyes. “Now we’ve just made it harder on ourselves.”
I can’t believe he’s saying all this. It doesn’t make sense. We love each other. We practically live together. And yet he wants us to break up when he moves back home? Why? Why would he do that?
